I just happened to be checking my water bill online earlier today, and it pointed me to the company's water quality evaluation (http://www.amwater.com/twq/JP_tw

I just happened to be checking my water bill online earlier today, and it pointed me to the company's water quality evaluation (http://www.amwater.com/twq/JP_twq.pdf http://www.amwater.com/twq/JP_twq.pdf), which listed daily water supplied as its first statistic, about 48,800m³. We're a rather small metropolis, ~50K residents of the city proper, not all of whom are on the water system, plus the system supplies to some neighboring cities, 270K daytime population for the city itself, a lot of industry, at least some of which is water hungry (bottling beverages rather requires that...). A city/metro area 10 times as big with comparable industry, which is still pretty small, would indeed about equal the water the canal puts to very good use, no waste I say. If you've ever been to the Canal Zone, you know it has absolutely no lack for water, heck, we've been doing jungle training there forever.